


everybody's happy nowadays

by flwrpotts



Category: Archie Comics & Related Fandoms, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: M/M, a john hughes movie only gay, kevin is gay and done with everyone's shit, reggie is a flaming bisexual disaster, season 2 doesn't exist and I don't care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 03:30:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15501354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flwrpotts/pseuds/flwrpotts
Summary: "pool," Reggie texts him, ten minutes before last period. "midnight. door is unlocked."Kevin glances over to where the boy in question is surrounded by a crowd of jocks, all pelting jokes at one another, razor quick and obscene, punctuated by explicit hand gestures.They make eye contact, searing and just a little too long, and something in Kevin’s stomach flips.He doesn’t reply to the text, in some effort to prove a point to himself, despite knowing full well that in a few hours he’ll be driving the family minivan down the street with no headlights on to avoid waking his father.or.kevin and reggie don't like one another. really.





	everybody's happy nowadays

**Author's Note:**

> this is what happens when you watch riverdale fan videos for more than an hour and let a crackship completely consume your life! warnings for teenage drinking, semi-explicit sex, and general shenanigans. also, title is from a song of the same name by the buzzcocks. enjoy!

In his defense, Kevin doesn’t really know how it starts. To be Kevin Keller is to be a lonely thing, fussed and bitter, never really on the inside, but never on the outside, either. There’s no room for relationships in the mix, especially not boys who drive Maseratis and hit on the pretty female teachers and smoke joints in the parking lot after school, Kendrick Lamar dripping from the speakers of their tricked out cars.

For most of his life, Reggie Mantle has been firmly in the category of _mindless jock,_ alongside the likes of Jason Blossom and Moose Mason and the rest of their crowd. Attractive, sure, and a little wilder than the rest- still infamous for jumping off Midge Klump’s roof at a pool party in ninth grade, the first of the entire grade to have alcohol at his birthday party. But ultimately forgettable.

 _Sure, he’s good looking_ , he remembers remarking to Betty, sometime around the beginning of their freshman year. _But give it twenty years, and he’ll be the pudgy guy at a car dealership trying to sell you a used Subaru and sweating Irish Spring._

It’s an assessment he’s stood by through all the years, through the awkward middle school years and the slightly less awkward freshman year of high school, through dances and sports tryouts and Jason Blossom’s murder, all the way up to the moment that Coach Clayton pairs them up as training partners for wrestling pre-season.

“Keller!” barks Coach Clayton from across the room, unaware of the anguish he’s putting him through. “You’re with Mantle.”

Kevin swears _one, two, three_ times in his head, and then smoothes his features into something neutral, making his way across the room.

Reggie is surrounded by a boisterous, predatory group of his friends, shirtless for no discernible reason, and Kevin pushes down the urge to get nervous. Reggie Mantle has the uncanny ability to make him feel thirteen again, awkward and uncomfortable in his skin, desperate for some sort of approval.

“You ready?” he asks, voice flat, and Reggie turns to grin at him, something menacing in the angle of his smirk.

“Yeah, don’t get your panties in a twist,” Reggie replies lazily, and then proceeds to spend another nine minutes screwing around with his friends while Kevin watches from the sidelines, silent and fuming.

 _I hate you,_ he thinks to himself as Reggie plays a game of sloppy, too-aggressive basketball with his friends, all elbows into ribs and the sort of casual violence that Kevin can feel the aftershocks of in his bones, like he’s the one that’s been struck. _I hate you, I hate you, I hate you._

Eventually, Reggie manages to detach himself from his crowd of veritable groupies, and the two of them run through the same exercises Kevin’s been doing since the eighth grade, basic muscle memory at this point, twisting his arm at the right moment, bracing his legs, the sweet, blistering satisfaction of being able to flip someone.

“Try and keep up, alright?” Reggie says as they’re getting into first position, and Kevin grits his teeth, says a silent prayer for training partners to change throughout the season.

They’re evenly matched, maddeningly so, and by the end of the two hours Kevin is frustrated like he’s been pushing at a brick wall, limbs aching and damp with perspiration, while Reggie seems as if he’s barely broken a sweat.

“See you tomorrow, I guess,” he snaps sarcastically at the end of practice as he shoves his towel into his gym bag, feeling suffocated somehow, claustrophobic on Reggie’s presence.

“You got a problem with me, Keller?” Reggie drawls in response, meant to invite attention. Heads snap, and Kevin feels anxiety thrum like a living key through his chest, the wrong note plucked on an instrument, vibrating through the air. He bristles.

“I do, actually,” Kevin says shortly, and then turns on his heel to exit the gym, makes his way towards the locker room, anxious for a shower and some kind of solitude. Reggie has a way getting under his skin, eliciting reactions from him that are too forceful, too much. He tries to unwind the tension pulling his muscles taut, with limited success.

“Hey, what the fuck?” asks Reggie, stubbornly following him as Kevin yanks open the door to the locker room, empty but for the two of them.

“What?” he asks dryly. “You’re a walking cliche, Reggie. Forgive me if I don’t fall at your feet like the rest of the school.” He twists the knob to the shower, and cold water hits his wrist, making his pulse jump.   
Reggie laughs, and the sound echoes through the locker room. The shower is heating up now, making steam curl up from the floor, and Kevin grits his teeth, braces himself- for what, he doesn’t know. A punch in the face, a cruel barb, something that’ll hurt, bash some damage into the soft part of him.

“What, and you aren’t?” Reggie says instead in reply, sounding amused, and the truth of it only makes Kevin want to deny it more.

“Fuck you, Mantle,” he spits, and turns to shower. He drops a bar of soap in his haste, and him and Reggie both go reaching for it, nearly bumping foreheads in their haste.

Their hands meet for half a beat too long as Reggie hands the bar of off-brand soap over to him, both of them nothing but athletic shorts, and Kevin sucks in a tight breath, waiting for the slur. _Just do it,_ he thinks to himself, wired with tension, _just do it already, just-_

Reggie kisses him instead, presses his mouth against Kevin’s and steps closer, something hungry in the gesture. His hands come up to tangle in Kevin’s hair, and he tilts his head, bettering the angle.

His first thought is that, for all of Reggie Mantle’s reputation, he isn’t a very good kisser. His second is _what the fuck am I doing?_

In all his shock, he drops the bar of soap again, and Reggie goes skidding back, looking as if he’s never seen Kevin before. He slips on the wet tiles in his haste and falls on his ass, remarkably uncomposed, something raw about him. Kevin would laugh, if the shock wasn’t stunning him, over and over.

Kevin offers him a hand up, and then they are kissing again, longer this time, bodies pressed up against one another like they aren’t at immediate risk of being caught.

He slides his hands over the sharp lines of Reggie’s abdomen, the arc of his hip bones and firm plane of his torso, everything in him hard and unrelenting. Reggie shudders and traces a rivulet of water down Kevin’s neck, biting down at the pale skin of his collarbone, leaving a mark that is surely going to bruise.

Reggie backs him up against the slick, chilly tile and Kevin moans when he wraps his hand around him, brain overwhelmed and short circuiting, caught in nothing but the sensation.

“Fuck,” he says, hushed, breathing loud in the quiet room. His foot is still under the boiling spray of the shower, and the shock of hot-cold highlights the wildness of it all, the feeling of Reggie getting him off quick and unrefined. He returns the favor after, and the sensation of Reggie falling apart against him is enough to get him hard again, the two of them kissing sloppily, with too much teeth.

It’s over quickly, the two of them gasping for air, and it is only through sheer willpower that Kevin is the first to leave, pivoting and walking out the door, jamming on his sneakers untied and not bothering to zip up his hoodie, already feeling the place where his hip is going to bruise.

It’s everything he can do not to look back, brain stacked up with questions that don’t have answers, with the handsome lines of Reggie’s face flashing behind his eyelids.

* * *

 

Kevin swears it’ll never happen again, only that once turns into twice, and then three times, and then it is something less like an accident and more like a pattern, or really, a _habit,_ if Kevin is being perfectly honest to himself.

Reggie seeks him out at odd times, pulling him into abandoned classrooms or the last shower stall in the locker room, leading him around corners by shirtsleeves or polo collars, his mouth hot and insistent on Kevin’s as soon as they’re out of sight.

He hates Reggie- hates his gelled hair and his long legs and his loud laugh, hates the way that he moves so easily through the world, hates his casual cruelty. And yet, he can’t deny the illicit thrill the comes with sneaking around with him. He doesn’t like Reggie, but he _wants_ him, and the polarity of it all makes his head spin.

If Betty knew, she would puzzle through the messy, fractured layers of dislike and lust, would psychoanalyze the truth out of Kevin, draw it out to some logical conclusion about _fear of attachment_ or _mommy issues_ or something else that Kevin would prefer not to think about. But she doesn’t, and so Kevin lets himself slip mindlessly into the routine of sneaking around, blissfully ignoring the meaning of it all. Him and Reggie still snap at one another practice, go through the elaborate machinations of hatred, but it stings less when Kevin knows he’ll have Reggie’s teeth at his bottom lip as soon as the hour is up.

The bell has just rung for lunch the next Tuesday when Reggie strides into the study lounge, where Kevin is listening patiently to Veronica’s complaints about her possibly criminal parents.

“Keller,” he says, the picture of cool, backpack slung on one shoulder and hoodie carelessly tossed over his torso. “I need to talk to you.”

“And why is that?” Veronica asks, bristling at the interruption, but Kevin is already sliding his things into his backpack, fingers fumbling on the clasp in his haste.

“Wrestling stuff,” Kevin answers for him, pointedly breezy. “Coach wants us to come up with some new, um, training exercises.”

“Alright, then,” Veronica says slowly, arching an inquisitive eyebrow, but returning to the book in her lap all the same. Kevin’s heart pounds loudly enough for him to hear it in his ears.

They duck through old hallways and the rarely used wing of the school, Kevin tripping over himself to keep up because Reggie Mantle is the sort of person that never walks, only strides. Kevin wonders idly when he became the sort of person that follows those sort of people around.

Eventually, they reach the door to an old supply closet, the fluorescent light bulb flickering weakly above them. Kevin raises an eyebrow, unimpressed, and Reggie hooks two fingers in the belt loop of his chinos and pulls him through the door, hard, slamming it shut behind them and twisting the lock without looking.

“Training exercises, huh?” Reggie mocks, the sound muffled in the collar of Kevin’s shirt, teeth already on the fragile skin of his neck.

“Something like that,” he says agreeably, knotting his fingers through the hair at the base of Reggie’s neck and yanking him up for a kiss.

Their mouths smash together, hot and uncoordinated, and Kevin shuts his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the smug curl of Reggie’s mouth, flushed red and obscenely wet, or the graceless mess of his dark hair.

Reggie untucks Kevin’s shirt roughly and slides his hands across his back, digging his fingers in between vertebrae, while Kevin presses his thumb hard into the wing of his collarbone, the sharp line of his jaw. Reggie swears into Kevin’s hair and fumbles with his pants, undoing the button and zipper with uncoordinated, sloppy fingers.

Reggie thrusts his hips into him and gets one hand into Kevin’s pants at the same time, and Kevin moans at the feeling of it; Reggie’s callused hand too tight and too hot and just right.

The tiny, old storage closet smells like cleaning supplies and dust, and Reggie’s face is angular and strange in the fractured light coming through the gap of the door, but Kevin can’t find it in himself to mind, not when Reggie has one hand down his pants and the other fisted tight in the collar of his shirt, keeping him close.

He comes into Reggie’s fist with a startled gasp that he swallows, and it’s hardly a kiss anymore by the time that Kevin gets Reggie’s jeans unbuttoned all the way and takes him into his hand.

“Fuck,” Reggie says into his hair, startled, and Kevin jacks him slowly and then faster, until Reggie is coming with a shuddery moan that he presses into Kevin’s shoulder.

They straighten their clothes in silence, and Kevin wipes his hand on the stray roll of paper towels that his elbow’s balanced on. It’s awkward, but not nearly awkward as it should be, and Kevin resists the urge to steal glances at the elegant lines of Reggie’s face, the lazy grace with which he slings his hoodie back on. He opens his mouth to say something, and then closes it again.

Reggie kisses his temple and slips out the door, and Kevin sinks onto the ground, inhaling the scent of lemon cleaner and pressing his thumb into his raw bottom lip, hoping that the sting will grant him some sort of clarity.

* * *

 

He’s studying at Betty’s house a few hours later, picking at one of Alice Cooper’s _healthy_ after school snacks and letting Betty untangle the myriad mysteries of Geometry proofs for him.

It’s a comfortable, worn routine, and Kevin can easily sum up a hundred similar memories, tracing all the way back to their childhoods. He can hardly remember a point where Betty wasn’t in his life, smiling brightly and knitting him scarves in the winter and then disappearing back into the knot of _Jughead-Archie-Betty,_ effectively forgetting about him in the process.

She’s midway through walking him through the sixth problem in their homework set when she cuts herself off abruptly, looking up from the yellow legal pad she prefers to take notes on, like she’s a college professor instead of a sixteen year old girl.

“What is _that?”_ she asks, and for a split second Kevin is terrified that Jughead is going to be in her window for another lover’s tryst. He’s happy for Betty and her true crime obsessed romance, but he _really_ doesn’t need to witness it firsthand.

But before he can say anything, Betty is pulling at the collar of his button down, exposing the lurid hickey on his neck, bright purple and telling. Kevin pulls the fabric back over the mark, color rising on his cheeks despite his best efforts to look nonchalant.

“It’s nothing,” he says, deflecting. “What were you saying about the, um, quadratic equation?”

“Who gave you that?” she asks, curiosity making her eyes look huge and unreal, Disney princess greene.

“No one,” he replies, stubbornly, and Betty’s determination curls into a knowing half-smile. “I dropped a bottle of shampoo on my neck in the shower.”

“Is it a secret?” she asks, neatly sidestepping his half assed excuse. “Southsider again?”

Kevin calculates the odds that she’s going to let the subject go, and sets down his pencil with a sigh.

“It’s just a hookup, Betty,” he says, covering the mark with his hand. “I know you’re familiar with the concept.”

She stares at him for a moment, assessing. Kevin’s heart pounds in his chest, like the word _Reggie_ is going to appear over his head in glowing neon letters.

“Alright,” she replies, half a beat too late. “But you have to promise to tell me if it turns into something more.”

He rolls his eyes, but hooks his pinky around hers anyways, like they’ve been doing since they were ten. “I promise.”

Betty launched back into her explanation of the math that will never again be relevant to his life, and Kevin picks up a baby carrot and tries not to zone out into memories of the supply closet earlier that day, Reggie’s soft hair and rough hands.

* * *

 

A month later, Kevin’s breathing has just returned to normal when Reggie, the picture of faux-casual, runs a hand through his hair and says, offhand, “By the way, I’m throwing a party this Saturday night. Starts at eleven.”

Kevin focuses intently on doing the last button on his shirt. He and Reggie don’t _invite_ one another to things, unless it’s the backseat of a parked car.

“You’re telling me this, why?” he says archly, trying his very best to look disaffected. They’re backstage in the school’s theater, and everything smells like cheap, half dried paint, the stray props and old sets sprawled out around them.

Kevin slides off the mirrored vanity he’s sitting on, pressing closely, insistently, into Reggie’s space. Reggie kisses the fragile skin at the corner of his eye, that odd tenderness that occasionally creeps its way into his mannerisms, and then steps back.

“You might as well start socializing with the team, eventually,” he replies, arching one too-knowing eyebrow at Kevin.

“I’ll see if I can make it,” he says, mentally calculating the odds that he can come up with an excuse to get Betty or Veronica to come with him.

As it turns out, Jughead and Archie are having some sort of _bro night,_ or something equally terrible, and he manages to persuade Betty and Veronica to ditch their plans for a movie night.

“Why watch a movie when you can live out a scene in one?” he pleads at one point, and Betty laughs at him, but starts rifling through Veronica’s closet for something to wear, anyways.

The party is already boiling over by the time that they get there, kids puking on the lawn and bass spilling out the broken bay windows with no one to hear it. Parties at the Mantle household are something out of the worst sort of 80s movie, rife with hot tub hookups and bad keg stands, the wrong couples fucking in the master bedroom for the entire school to gossip about.

 _This is a terrible decision,_ Kevin thinks to himself, sliding into that distinctive feeling of being the only person not having the time of their life.

“This is a terrible decision,” Betty says aloud a moment later. Relief unfolds through Kevin’s chest.

“We can go home,” he offers too quickly, already pivoting on one heel to leave.

“Absolutely not,” replies Veronica, leaving no room for dissent. She loops one arm through each of theirs, like some sort of twisted over the Yellow Brick Road, and shuffles them stiffly into the house. “A Lodge never leaves a party before staying at least an hour.”

They step into the house, door swung wide open on its hinges, and he can taste the alcohol soaked into the thick, humid air. _Adios kill your soul then we body your ghost_ booms the stereo, the bass so loud it vibrates through his teeth.

This is nothing like the elegant brutality of Cheryl’s old parties at Thornhill, Gothic horror disguised as a rager, all of the shocks and mishaps preplanned by one of the Blossom twins. This is something much more mundane, much more sinister and undone.

The kitchen is sticky with spilled drinks and poorly ashed cigarettes, but Veronica mixes them elaborate cocktails with her signature grace, pouring them into red solo cups when she’s done, ruining the effect. Betty and Kevin sit at the marble island while she works, twisting on their chairs and chatting about nothing in particular. Someone’s having sex in the bedroom upstairs, and faint moans echo through the ceiling, distorted and unsettling.

“I’ve exercised all my restraint, and made you a triple,” Veronica says brightly, and Kevin takes a swig of something that tastes like rubbing alcohol and maraschino cherries. He and Betty make the same puckered face, and Veronica rolls her eyes fondly, taking a long sip without flinching.

Together, they make their way out to the back deck, where teenagers are sprawled in various states of undress, flopped out on the lawn or stacked on top of one another in the hot tub. There a group of cheerleaders swimming in their underwear in the massive pool like sirens, their limbs flashing blue and green and purple underneath the neon light that diffuses through the water.

Kevin feels nauseous and a little too alone, even as Veronica and Betty stand next to him, battering back and forth some old inside joke shared between them. _This is not for you_ simpers a voice in his head, one that sounds suspiciously like Cheryl Blossom. He knocks back another long sip of his drink, trying to numb the insecurity that lances his chest.

There are classmates clapping him on the back and tossing out easy greetings, and yet he feels like he’s in a different universe all together. He doesn’t know what he’s doing here, in this soulless McMansion with people who didn’t understand him until he shaped himself into something they could.

He spies Reggie, mid-keg stand, with a bunch of his friends hoisting him up in their royal blue letterman jackets and sharp white grins. He’s set back down on his feet and laughs uproariously, wiping Bud Light foam with the back of his hand.

There are girls clustered around, waiting to talk to him, but he catches Kevin’s gaze from across the party. Something sparks in his eyes, like a distant flare gun, and Kevin feels a flip in his stomach that’s equal part raw nerve and excitement.

Reggie rattles his empty red solo cup obnoxiously, for his friends to see, and starts to shuffle his way through to the kitchen, his shoulder easily slicing through the crowd of pseudo groupies that surround him.

Kevin stammers an excuse to Betty and Veronica and ducks back inside, draining the poisonous remains of his drink. The effects of the alcohol hit like a kick to the chest, and he feels too warm and strangely, synthetically happy.

Reggie is making himself a vodka soda when Kevin walks in, one that looks to be more like four pure shots than a mixed drink.

“Keller,” he greets, pushing a hand through the messy peaks of his hair, sweaty from the heat that presses in around them. “You made it.” The strange, flat light of the kitchen washes Reggie out, turns his hair into an unreal kind of shade of blue-black.

“I did,” Kevin replies, not glib for once, and leans back against the cool marble countertop.

Reggie reaches past Kevin to put his plastic cup down, the movement slow, deliberate, pressing their bodies together inch by inch until there’s no space between them. Drunk electricity hums its way through Kevin’s veins. Reggie smells like hair gel and vodka and sweat, and Kevin slides his hands up under the heavy material of that royal blue Letterman jacket, before reaching up to tangle his hands around his neck in a loop.

Reggie cups his jaw in one hand, that strange intimacy, and his gaze flicks down to Kevin’s mouth, and that’s when Ginger Lopez walks in, looking like she’s fallen on the other side of trashed in her mini skirt and crocheted bralette, bare feet slapping loudly against the tiled floor.

Kevin and Reggie spring apart astonishingly quick, nearly knocking over a half empty handle of Everclear in the process, and she blinks at them, eyelashes spidery and clumped from the pool.

“Am I, like, interrupting something?” she asks, more inebriated than malicious. Kevin notices idly that her toenails are painted electric blue, that the mascara streaks down her face look like tear tracks.

“Nah,” Reggie says, composed once more and flashing her his quicksilver smile. “Keller was just asking where the bathroom was.” He turns to Kevin. “Three doors down to the right.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Kevin says, too slowly, brain swimming in whatever the fuck Veronica put in his drink. He turns and disappears down the hallway on unsteady feet, the sound of Reggie’s low voice and Ginger’s nasally laugh from the kitchen hitting him like a blow to the chest.

The bathroom is sleek and minimalistic, like everything else in the Mantle home, and Kevin stares at himself in the mirror, his face seeming distorted and unfamiliar. He takes in several deep breaths, wishing that the world would stop rocking around him.

Reggie did not choose Ginger over him. _Reggie did not choose Ginger over him._ He wouldn’t care if Reggie _did_ choose Ginger over him, because he is not anything to Reggie, Reggie is nothing to him. They are a blank space, a crossed out equation, the moment before the song kicks in, a nothing sort of thing.

“Get it together, Keller,” he informs his reflection, and splashes freezing water on his face, hoping that the shock will sober him up. Every time he blinks the world goes dark and dizzy, and he gropes around for the hand towel hung up neatly by the sink.

He wanders back into the kitchen after an indeterminable period of time, and finding it empty, goes to the back porch, where Betty and Veronica are still sitting on the steps, chatting idly about something or another.

“Kevin!” Veronica says, looking concerned. “We were getting worried. Where have you _been?”_

“You alright, Kev?” Betty adds, placing a small hand on his shoulder when he flops heavily in between them, flat on his back to look up at the stars.

“Oh, I’m fine,” he says, unconvincing, a little slurred. “Just- getting a glass of water.”

Betty and Veronica both glance down at his cup, which is filled with some cheap boxed wine he found on the island in the kitchen. Tactfully, neither of them says anything.

“Ugh,” Veronica says instead, looking up at someone. “It’s _his_ house. Could they at least get a room?”  
A horror movie dread twists and stirs to life in Kevin’s stomach, and he sits up with some effort to look over his shoulder.

Reggie has a bikini clad Josie in his lap, and they’re making out voraciously, with no care for the jeering from the surrounding crowd. As he watches, Reggie slides his fingers under the thin pink strings of her bathing suit, making her arch further into his chest.

He stares for a few moments, and then the nausea rises up sudden and sickening. Kevin stands and stumbles the six steps it takes to puke in the nearest bush, everything inside him roiling and acidic. He coughs after, throat burning, and then throws up again. In a small mercy, Reggie has his tongue shoved too far down Josie’s throat to notice. _Fuck._

Vaguely, he’s aware that Betty is rubbing his back and saying something soothing and kind, and Veronica is trying to persuade him to drink a glass of water, but the image of Reggie’s hands wrapping around Josie, lovely, tiny Josie, with the voice that could shatter glass and the unwavering confidence, is looping through his brain on automatic replay.

“I’m fine,” he says, straightening up from where he’s hunched over. He accepts the glass of water that Veronica has somehow magicked up, and takes a gulp of it. “I forgot to eat dinner.”

Something flickers in Veronica’s eyes for a moment, but she loops an arm through his a moment later and he dismisses it as a mere trick of the light, while Betty steps away from the two of them, tapping at her phone.

In his peripheral vision, he sees Reggie sweep up Josie in a fit of giggles, carrying her inside, disappearing up the steps to his bedroom. He keeps watching, even after they disappear, even after the moment is over, like if he looks hard enough Reggie will come back down the stairs, alone.

He thinks he’s going to be sick again, but Betty reappears before he can, cell phone pressed against her ear. “See you in a couple minutes,” she says quietly, wrapping a strand of blonde hair around her index finger. “Thanks, Jug. Love you too.”

There’s a quiet, private smile on her face as she hangs up, and it’s such an unobtrusive, soft expression that Kevin thinks the jealousy might eat him alive, the hungry animal that lives in his chest rearing up to furious life. All the confused, drunken hurt bubbling through him rips like popped stitches on a hastily closed wound, giving way straight into anger.

“Jug and Archie are going to be here in half an hour,” she says.

He wants to pop the bubble of Jughead and Betty’s happiness. He wants to bash some damage into Reggie’s face, wants to make everyone in this fucking town feel the way he does, wants another shot.

Kevin decides, furious and reeling, that the last desire is the most attainable.

“I’m gonna go get a Jello shot,” he declares, swinging his right arm out of Veronica’s grasp.

“Are you sure that’s the best idea?” Betty asks, all gentle concern and pretty features, and Kevin’s mouth turns into a sneer before he can reign himself in.

“We don’t all have boyfriends to go home and fuck later,” he says voice sharp despite the slurred vowels, and surprise blooms on Betty’s face.

“Kevin,” she says, and it’s somewhere in between reprimand and question.

“What?” he says, laughing a little meanly. “It’s _true._ We don’t all live in fairyland, Betty.”

“I’m going to go grab Veronica and I’s shoes,” Betty says, a flimsy excuse, and disappears back over towards the house. Her shoulders are still lined with tension, but she still seems more confused than angry. She’s forgiven him before she even knows the crime and Kevin hates her for it, a little bit.

“Seriously, what is going on with you?” Veronica asks as soon as Betty is out of earshot, the dark waves of her hair glowing with moonlight. Kevin shrugs, miserable.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Get me a drink?”

Veronica appraises him for a moment, and then sighs.

“One Jello shot,” she says. “And then we’re leaving. And in exchange, you tell me what’s actually happening with you lately.” She watches him drunkenly attempt to unlock his phone. “Once you’ve sobered up, that is.”

“Well, looks like daddy did teach you something about _the art of the deal_ ,” he replies, sarcastic and thoughtless, but there’s no real heat behind it, and Veronica merely rolls her eyes before dragging him over to the cabana, where there are pyramids of Jello shots stacked up neatly in Day-Glo colors.   
Upstairs, Kevin swears he can hear the shivery echo of a moan. He chooses the acid green colored one and knocks it back, barely tasting it before grabbing another.

* * *

 

He wakes up the next morning with his head pounding and the sweet, sick taste in his mouth that means that he’s going to puke. He presses his face into the comforters, trying to bargain for another fifteen minutes of hazy sleep, only to recoil when they smell like expensive lavender instead of the familiar laundry detergent of his bedroom.

Kevin stirs, blinking at the insistent, bleached sunlight coming in through the massive windows, and realizes with a start that he’s in Veronica’s bedroom. Memories of the previous night start to flicker through his brain, choppy and inconsistent- Josie’s fingers twisted through Reggie’s hair, the acidic bite of his drink, puking in Veronica’s master bathroom, slurring about Reggie- _Christ._

Veronica appears in the doorway, immaculately put together in a silk pajama set and holding two steaming cups of black coffee.

“How are you feeling?” she asks wryly, arching an eyebrow at him, and Kevin gratefully accepts the steaming cup, burning his tongue on the first sip.

“I’ve had better mornings,” he replies, trying to figure out exactly how much he has to apologize for. “I’m sorry, about last night.”

Veronica just shrugs, the gesture casually elegant, and leans against the doorframe. “I’ve seen worse.”

Kevin presses his palms to his closed eyes until starbursts appear across his vision. “How bad was I?” he asks finally, unsure if he really wants to know the answer.

“Well,” she says, and dread coils in his stomach. “You disappeared for half an hour and came back completely trashed, puked in a bush, yelled at Betty, did three more shots, puked _again_ in Archie’s car-”

“I-” he interjects, apology on the tip of his tongue, but Veronica isn’t finished.

“You weren’t too bad after that. Betty and I managed to carry you up the stairs, and then you just rambled for a couple minutes about your mystery hookup and passed out in my bed.”

“Sorry,” he says, cringing. “I overestimated my tolerance-”

Veronica waves away the rest of his explanation. “Please. It happens to the best of us.” And then, with a smirk kicking at the corner of her mouth: “Well, maybe not in Riverdale.”

Kevin crawls out of Veronica’s bed, still wearing his clothes from last night, and follows her into the kitchen, where an elaborate breakfast buffet is sprawled out. He takes a plate of bacon and half a slice of toast, trying to quell the nausea riling him stomach.

His hangover and the lingering shame of the evening mix into a bad feeling that eats its way through his body, pounding headache and aching muscles and a sick, seething sense of dread. He shuts his eyes, and image of Reggie disappearing with Josie up the stairs flashes in technicolor.

Kevin spends the rest of the day hanging out with Veronica, watching _The Matchelor_ and gossiping about Cheryl Blossom apparently hooking up with one of Jughead’s new friends from Southside High.

He manages to text an awkward, too-brief apology to Betty and venmo's Archie fifty bucks, captioned by the green-faced emoji and the blue car. Archie likes the payment in response, and Betty texts him _it’s fine, Kev,_ so he figures that things aren’t totally ruined.

However, there’s still the matter of school.

Kevin walks in Monday morning, dread coiled around the pit of his stomach and the buttons of his shirt suffocatingly tight. It’s not so much that he’s worried about the gossip- honestly, it’s more unexpected to _not_ puke at a Mantle party at some point during your time at Riverdale High.

It’s that he will come back and Reggie will have forgotten- denied- everything that’s ever happened between them. That there will be no marker, no evidence, no reminders of the hours and hours spent in covert places, pressed tight enough against Reggie that there was no room for loneliness.

If Friday has taught Kevin anything, it’s that Reggie, for all his smooth skin and large hands and soft hair, is not a good person. And Kevin knows, in his heart of hearts, that he is not either. Two bad people together is always an unfortuitous match- you only have to look at any of his friend’s parents to see that.

All in all, he thinks to himself, he’ll probably be better off if Reggie _is_ with Josie. And yet, the thought of it is like a kick in the chest, a baseball bat to the fragile thing behind his ribs.

He walks into the study lounge three minutes before the bell to homeroom, a studied avoidance that won’t draw any questions.

Betty and Jughead are playing footsie under the table and probably talking about gruesome cold cases, while Veronica and Archie make out like it’s the last time they’re ever going to see one another. He glances out of the corner of his eye, and Reggie is being a dick with a posse of his boys in the corner- trying to shake candy bars out of the vending machine like he couldn’t buy the damn thing in under twenty seconds. The scene is all so familiar that Kevin’s head spins with deja-vu.

“Kev!” Betty says when she catches sight of him. “How-”

“Keller,” barks Reggie from across the room, catching sight of him. He strides over, Moose Mason and Trev Brown halfheartedly tagging along behind him, and hooks an arm around Kevin’s shoulders, vaguely threatening, a little bit mocking.

“Coach wants to talk to you and I after practice,” he says lazily. “Don’t be late again.”

“Man, why is it that Coach always wants to talk to the two of you?” complains Trev, more whiny than suspicious, and Reggie cuffs him on the back of the head, a little too hard.

“Just because your ass got demoted to JV-” starts Reggie, and the trio of boys descend into a flurry of sharp elbowing and crude jokes and aggressive hair ruffling, the sincerity of which is impossible to discern. Kevin rolls his eyes.

“I’ll be there,” he says, directing the comment towards a distracted Reggie. Anxiety is like a jolt of freezing water down his spine, and he assesses Josie in the left corner of the room, bent over a frilled stack of sheet music with the two other Pussycats. She doesn’t _look_ upset, but that isn’t saying much.

The school day passes by slowly and all at once, Kevin half listening to drone of teachers and Betty being the only person to raise her hand in each and every class, plain turkey sandwich for lunch because his father is a hopeless cook at the best of times.

He watches Reggie all the way through, trying to gauge whether he’s being beckoned towards another hookup, or whether it’s something more. Kevin is not someone naturally inclined towards optimism, but he stares at a boy with jet black hair, and the hope is a dangerous, disquieting thing that he thinks he could learn to like.

 

Practice goes by in the same dizzy, distracting blur, a mess of drills that run together until he is red-cheeked and soaked through with sweat, wanting a lemon-lime Gatorade more than just about anything in the world.

He takes his time in the showers, and Reggie does too, until they are the only two people left in the locker room. A thrill shivers through Kevin as he scrubs cheap shampoo through his hair, every tendon in his body wired with anticipation.

He’s so intent on remaining casual that he doesn’t realize that Reggie’s behind him until a hand claps on his shoulder, and he almost falls on his ass as he turns to meet Reggie in a kiss.

It is so easy, to lapse back, to get lost in the blunt scrape of Reggie’s nails over his chest, or the feeling of his teeth on his bottom lip, but he stumbles back after a second, trying to clear his brain.

“Wait-” he says. “What?”  
Reggie arches a mocking eyebrow. “Didn’t think you really needed a lesson, Keller,” and then, a second later, filthier this time. “But, hey, if you want a teacher-”

Kevin suppresses a moan when Reggie wraps a warm, callused hand around his dick, and steps back, out of the hot, stinging spray of the shower. His head spins with the desire to forget the party, forget Josie, forget everything but Reggie steadying him with a hand against his hip.

“We need to talk about Friday,” he manages, struggling for air a little bit.

Reggie shifts his weight over to one leg, the stance defensive. “What’s there to talk about?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the whole _making out with Josie and then disappearing upstairs_ thing?” he says sarcastically, anger starting to flare bright and hot in his stomach.

Reggie shrugs. “Oh, that,” he says, doing a poor imitation of disaffected. “We went upstairs. She wouldn’t blow me, so I went back downstairs and found someone who would.” His smile turns into something sharper, meaner. “Ginger, to be more specific.”

Kevin twists off the shower, and silence rings through the room, heavier than before. “You are _unbelievable,”_ he says, almost to himself, and walks towards the lockers, looking for his clothes.

“Mh, that’s what she said,” Reggie drawls, and the betrayal closes its fist around Kevin’s throat, makes him feel like his head is about to burst. “Hey, where are you going?”   
“I’m leaving,” he says shortly, and yanks on his pants, feeling raw and exposed and a little bit like he’s about to cry. Reggie stares at him, almost hurt, like he has any right to be the one feeling sorry for himself.

“I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal out of this,” says Reggie slowly, wrapping a towel around his waist in the middle of the room. “What’s your fucking problem, Keller?”   
“Fuck you,” Kevin says evenly, slamming the metal locker shut hard enough for the sound to reverberate through the room. His shoes squeak on the damp floor as he walks out.

“You already have!” Reggie calls after him, laughing something ugly, and Kevin bites his lip hard enough that he has to swipe away blood with the back of his hand.

* * *

 

He throws himself into bed the minute he gets home, pulling the pillow over his head like something out of a John Hughes movie. He feels frail all the way through, like a house of cards about to tip over, the ashy remains of a burnt down building.

It’s worse than the party, because this time he can’t blame the alcohol, can’t blame a bad night, can’t blame Reggie for being the person that he always has been, that he’s never promised to change. He can only blame himself, and his fatal tendency to want to make interesting people good. He thinks of Joaquin, and his stomach twists.

Kevin climbs into bed still fully dressed and half dozes through the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, wrung out on his own misery, something insipid and dull unfolding across the television screen. A rerun of _Friends,_ he thinks, the one where Ross gets married the second time.

There’s no one he can really talk to- no one knows about him and Reggie, and he hasn’t the energy to explain the whole story out to Veronica, or god forbid Betty. Neither of them would understand, anyways. They don’t understand what it’s like to have to scrape for tidbits of affection, intimacy, not when they’ve been fed it off a silver spoon all their lives.

“Kevin!” calls his father from downstairs, just as the sun is starting to sink into the horizon. “Come downstairs for a minute.”

Kevin groans and drags himself out of bed, examining himself in the mirror on the back of his door. He looks like a wreck, all dishevelled clothing and faint bruising underneath his eyes, but heads downstairs anyway, praying he’ll be released from whatever conversation his father wants to have quickly.

But when he hops off the last stair, his father isn’t alone. “Hi, Kevvy,” says a woman, and then he’s throwing himself into his mother’s arms, laughing through his shock.

His mother: pint sized even in fatigues, mouth creased with smile lines and hair the exact shade as his swept back into a bun. She laughs when she sees him, the sound as bright and obnoxiously loud as its always been.

“I didn’t think you were going to be back for another month,” he exclaims, and she laughs again, the sound reverberating through his chest.

“I lied,” she says, and it’s his turn to laugh, feeling near tears for about the fourth time of the day. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Count me surprised,” he says, struck by a fierce wave of _missing_ his mom, even as she’s standing right in front of him. Six months feels like a lifetime in Riverdale.

“I’m ordering Pop’s,” his father says. “We’ll have a family dinner.”

They eat burgers and drink milkshakes in styrofoam cups, laughing over old stories from when Kevin was a baby and catching up on the past half a year, trying to bridge the chasm of time that stretches between them.

He loves his mother, loves her devotion to her country and her bad jokes and the way she smooths his hair back from his forehead. But there’s always something about her returns that ache.

It’s like somehow Kevin never really realizes how much he’s missed her until the moment that she comes back. Like he forgets that he only has a mother for half of each year, and then it hits him all at once- the messy, confusing pain he doesn’t really understand tangled up with the relief that she is back unharmed once more. The knowledge that even as she holds him, in a few weeks she’ll be gone again.

He doesn’t know how to explain it to himself, much less someone else, so he doesn’t, just lets it seep deeper into him, fester into a hurt he doesn’t know how to fix. For all of the issues his friends face with their parents, they still get to _see_ them everyday, still have the chance to fix things before their mother is gone again, their return not a guaranteed thing.

Maybe Jughead would understand. But Kevin isn’t about to seek out a heart to heart with Riverdale’s own Tim Burton. So instead, he kisses his mother on the cheek and returns to his bed, hungry and lonely and not quite sure of anything.

* * *

 

The next week is a strange, liminal time, an awkward space where the world is a little off-kilter, a new sort of normal, different enough to notice but not so different that there’s anything to be done about it. His mother is there and Reggie is not and that is the way that things have always been, despite the strangeness when put in practice.

He can’t figure out why the thought of going home to another _family dinner_ makes his stomach twist, so he follows Betty to the town library after school instead, texting his parents with an only partially invented essay for English.

 _Be safe!_ his mother replies, and the sentiment sends an ugly thrill through his as he’s unpacking his bag, stacking books onto the old, fake wood table. He sighs, and Betty glances over at him, one corner of her mouth twisting downward.

“What? he asks, defensive, and her posture, already perfect, tenses even more. She picks at the sleeve of her white sweater and says, pointedly “I was going to ask you if you’re alright, but every time I do you shut me down.”

“That’s because I _am_ fine,” he says, struggling to yank an American History textbook out of his bag with more effort than necessary. Betty purses her lips, aggravated but not willing to pick a fight, and tightens her ponytail.

“Is there something you’d like to discuss?” he says, all the bad feelings of the past week coalescing inside of him, becoming a living thing.

“Friends are supposed to tell one another things,” she says slowly, _meanly,_ and adrenaline starts through his veins, mostly because he knows that she’s right.

“I wasn’t aware I needed to disclose every detail to my personal life to you, Betty.”

“Nobody’s asking you to do that, Kev. But God, you don’t tell me or Veronica _anything_ anymore. And you don’t listen when we try to tell you things either! It’s like you’re- you’re an entirely different person, or something.”

Betty throws her hands out when she’s done, breathing quick, a fine lace of hives rising on the pale skin of her collarbone, the way it always does when she’s anxious or excited.

“That isn’t fair,” he protests, anger lighting a match in his chest. “You have no idea what it’s like.”

“You don’t have a monopoly on being the only misunderstood person in Riverdale, Kevin,” she says, quiet, the lack of malice in her voice hurting more than cruelty would.

“That’s easy for you to say, Betty,” he snaps, looking for anyway to direct the focus off himself, to stop feeling like Betty’s dissecting him in the middle of the study room. “You’re basically this town wet’s dream. You cannot possibly understand.”

Betty stares at him, hard, and slowly uncurls her fist, sliding her upturned palm over to Kevin, like he’s some kind of fortune teller. He takes her small, perpetually cold hand in his, and the sight of four bloodied scabs across the skin of her palm, dark red bordering on black, is enough to knock the wind out of him. The marks look deep and half-healed, like something that’s taken time to turn bloody.

“I don’t understand,” he says. Everything he knows about Betty shifts and distorts in his head, like taking a test at the optometrist’s, the picture going blurry and then suddenly sharper, clearer.

Betty pulls her hand out of his and tucks her hands against her knees. “Everyone has secrets, Kevin.”

He feels, absurdly, like he’s going to cry again. “I’m sorry,” he says, reeling, trying to find words that mean enough. “That I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t meant to guilt you, Kev,” she says, gentle. “I don’t know what’s going on with you right now, but I know it isn’t easy. I just want you to know that- we’re all a little messed up. But Ronnie and I are always here for you. Jug and Archie, too.”

“I’m kind of hooking up with Reggie Mantle” he confesses, and it’s a painful sort of relief to say it aloud, to uncork the strange torrent of emotions that have been festering inside him, the terrible and wonderful rawness that Reggie seems to tease out of him.

Betty blinks at him, and then laughs, causing the ancient librarian in the corner to shoot them a dirty look. “I knew there was something weird going on between the two of you! I just didn’t guess it was- that.”  
The balloon of dizzy, joyful relief pops in Kevin’s chest, and he picks up one of Betty’s neon highlighters, snapping the cap on and off. “Well, it’s nothing anymore,” he says, going for disaffected, and Betty studies him. Understanding alights in her eyes a moment later, and her mouth goes soft with sympathy.

“His party,” she guesses correctly. “With Josie.”

“I should have realize his reputation extended to both girls and boys,” he says airily, trying for disaffected, but Betty’s gaze is all too-knowing. He shrugs. “I don’t know how to feel about it. He’s _Reggie Mantle._ But he’s also- I don’t know. Something more. Something different. _”_

Betty looks as if she’s about to respond, and then her eyes go wide, like something out of a cartoon. Dreads drops hard into Kevin’s stomach, and he twists into his seat, just in time to watch Reggie saunter into the library, looking profoundly uncomfortable.

“Kevin,” he says, and the use of his first name is enough to make everything in him twist painfully, nostalgia for something he’s never once experienced.

“Reggie,” he replies carefully, and Betty’s gaze flicks back and forth between them intently, the same sort of analytical look she gets whenever she’s working on a particularly juicy story for the Blue and Gold.

Reggie shifts, nervous, and runs a hand through his hair. “You left your sneakers in my car.” His jaw ticks.

Kevin considers his options, considers Betty’s narrowly suppressed smirk, considers Reggie’s elegant features and even more refined cruelty, considers the way he pressed his mouth to Kevin’s shoulder, after that first time in the locker room.

“Yeah, okay,” he says.

He leads the way out to Reggie’s car, Betty waving him off with promises of a History assignment that she needs absolute silence to finish. Reggie’s car is stretched over four spaces in the tiny library parking lot, glossy red finish and basically screaming expensive, tricked out with all sorts of ostentatious adjustments.

Kevin pulls open the door to the passenger seat and sits down, wrangling with whether or not to put on his seatbelt. He does, after a moment, and Reggie twists the key in the ignition. Music liquifies through the speakers a second later, nearly loud enough to cause permanent damage, and Kevin is endeared to know that Reggue listens to Springsteen, something about taking a wrong turn, something about laying down your money and playing your part.

Reggie spins the volume down too fast, like he’s embarrassed, and the whole thing is so oddly endearing that Kevin doesn’t know what to say. He runs a hand through his hair and just holds it there, feeling his pulse hammer at his wrist. Reggie, strangely enough, looks just as strung out on nerves as he is, and they row through a few seconds of silence, fumbling for something to say.

“You didn’t actually leave a pair of sneakers in my car,” he says unnecessarily, and a laugh bursts out of Kevin before he can stop it. “Well, I know _that,”_ he says, and Reggie hesitates for two beats before leaning over across the center console to kiss him.

It’s surprisingly chaste, a simple press of mouths, and Kevin takes in the way that Reggie’s mouth is dry and chapped against his, the way his knuckles brush Kevin’s cheek, the gap in his breath, like all the air’s been startled out of him. The song ends and another kicks up a moment later with the melancholic drawl of harmonica, _well, now I’m no hero, that’s understood._

Reggie pulls back a second later, and gasps a little for breath, color rising high on the sharp incline of his cheekbones. “It’s not nothing,” he says, a little angry, even more lost. “You and me. It’s not nothing, alright?”

Kevin curls his fingers against Reggie’s jaw and nods, reassuring and reassured all at once. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and he can feel Reggie’s smile against his when he leans back in.

* * *

 

His mother leaves again the next day, pockets full of apologies and promises for Skype calls at early opportunity, and he and his father have a tense, lonely dinner of pasta with too much tomato sauce, trying to ignore the black hole that’s opened up across the table, swallowed all the light in the room.

He spends the rest of the with Betty and Veronica, trying to escape the graveyard his house becomes the week or two after mom leaves, and the two of him take him out to an overpriced brunch, distract him with gossip of Cheryl Blossom hooking up with Jughead’s Northsider friend, Toni, or something. They watch movies and eat Veronica’s frankly terrible low fat microwave popcorn and he pointedly does not discuss his mother or Reggie, despite Betty’s gentle probing.

He doesn’t tell either of them about the parking lot, about the way Reggie tasted like energy drinks and kissed with his eyes closed and insisted that they weren’t nothing, like he was afraid to admit it to himself.

Reggie no longer feels like a secret he’s trying to keep from himself, something he cannot bear for anyone else to know. Now it’s like something private, something that belongs to him, a luxury he can keep to himself for just a bit longer. Something that isn’t going to go anywhere, yet.

 _pool,_ Reggie texts him when they are back at school on Monday, ten minutes before last period. _midnight. door is unlocked._

Kevin glances over to where the boy in question is surrounded by a crowd of jocks, all pelting jokes at one another, razor quick and obscene, punctuated by explicit hand gestures.

They make eye contact, searing and just a little too long, and something in Kevin’s stomach flips.

He doesn’t reply to the text, in some effort to prove a point to himself, despite knowing full well that in a few hours he’ll be driving the family minivan down the street with no headlights on to avoid waking his father.

It’s quarter to midnight when he jiggles the doorknob to the Riverdale High Pool, typically used only for diving practices. The door swings open easily, and he inhales the damp, chlorine soaked air of the room, several degrees warmer than the air outside. The smell reminds him of being a little kid, of swimming in the public pools with Betty in the summer and getting atrocious sunburns that would make his nose peel.

Reggie is there already, naked and doing laps around the pool, the muscles in his back flexing in a way that makes Kevin’s mouth go dry. The splashing is the only sound echoing through the quiet, cavernous room.

He says nothing in greeting, just peels off his polo shirt and lets it crumple on the floor. His pants follow a moment later, and then his underwear, and then he’s in the pool, shivering as he adjusts to the temperature. The water is cool and chemical, and he wraps his arms around himself, turning to examine the glass case of trophies on the wall.

There’s a sharp yank at his ankle, and then Kevin is being pulled under the water, Reggie’s laughter sharp and staccato when he reemerges, spluttering, a moment later.

“You _asshole,”_ Kevin swears, and then Reggie has him pushed up against the wall of the pool, hands sliding through wet, unstyled hair.

“Mm, baby, tell me more,” Reggie deadpans, and then traces a rivulet of water down the pale skin of Kevin’s neck, biting hard at his collarbone. Kevin moans, the sound loud enough to be embarrassing, and scratches down the planes of Reggie’s back, fingers grasping for purchase on slick skin.

He hops up to sit on the edge of the pool, legs still dangling in the water, and Reggie kisses his way down Kevin’s chest, too much teeth for it to really be considered tender. He sucks a dark, filthy looking bruise on Kevin’s hip, and he tangles his fingers through Reggie’s damp, silky hair, pulling hard enough to sting.

He gasps when Reggie takes him into his mouth, and the sound ripples and distorts around the domed roof, like a feedback loop. His hips twitch, and Reggie presses a wet hand onto his lower abdomen, keeping him flat.

“Fuck,” sighs Kevin, heel digging into Reggie’s shoulder, and Reggie’s hum of assent is all he needs to finish, slumping back against the chilly, slick tile. The other boy clambers out of the pool and onto him a second later, and Kevin wonders absently how Reggie manages to stay so warm, burning the chill right out of his veins when he slides his tongue into his mouth.

He winces at the taste of himself on Reggie’s tongue, and hooks an ankle around the other boy’s sprawled legs, flipping them so that he’s on top. Reggie makes a surprised, pleased noise, and Kevin bites at his lower lip, hands coming up to cup his jaw.

He gets Reggie off slowly, teasingly, working a bruise into the soft, fragile skin of his sharp jaw, cataloguing the kicks and starts of his breath, the hitch that slides somewhere into a whine.

Reggie comes into his closed fist, and Kevin rolls off of him, their breathing too loud in the weird, distorted acoustics of the room. Water splashes at his feet where his ankles hang over the edge of the pool, and he lets the last of the shaky pleasure run its way through his body, everything in him relaxed and slow and good.

Reggie circles two fingers around the point of Kevin’s hip, and his smile is bright and sharp when he digs his thumb into the bruise, startling a gasp out of Kevin. He twists onto his side and presses his smile into Reggie’s shoulder.

“Hey, so,” Reggie starts, deliberately casual. He sits up and stretches his arms over his head, but Kevin remains sprawled on his back, admiring Reggie’s disturbingly toned abs. “Do you really think I’m such a terrible person?”  
Kevin blinks, surprised, and Reggie kicks at the water, terse. “I don’t know,” he says slowly, after a moment. “You’re not a very nice one.”

Reggie hops back into the water, nudging open Kevin’s legs to stand between them. His elbows are sharp where they rest on his thighs, and he presses his wet fingers against Kevin’s hip bones, thoughtful.

“The thing is,” he says to Kevin’s chest. “My dad’s Nicky Mantle. So I need to be good at sports. And I need to like cars. And being an asshole kind of comes with the territory.” His voice is very tired when he says it, and very unlike _Reggie Mantle,_ and something in it frightens Kevin, a little bit. “I’ve never made a single decision on my own.”

 _That’s not an excuse to be terrible_ he wants to say and doesn’t, because Reggie already knows that. So he presses his chin to the crown of Reggie’s damp head, and breathes in the smell of him, distinct even in the chlorine drenched room. “Me neither,” he says, and it tastes like a confession.

* * *

 

Something changes between them, after that.

Reggie’s always been strangely tender after sex, affectionate in a way he so rarely is in every other aspect of his life, and for the first time Kevin actually starts to relax into it, stops feeling like there’s a cruel joke about to be played on him.

He admits, if only to himself, that he likes it- Reggie pressing his mouth to the place  just under his cheekbone, tucking his face into the crook of Kevin’s shoulder, propping his head onto his shoulder as Kevin fixes his recklessly post-sex hair in the mirror, tipping his chin down to press a kiss to his shoulder.

It isn’t something that friends with benefits do, even if they aren’t quite enemies-with-benefits anymore. And yet, he doesn’t quite want it to stop. In fact, he wants more, wants all of the cliche hand holding and talking in bed, wants Reggie’s sharp mouth and surprising thoughtfulness and the way that he’s so himself all the time, bursting out of his skin, like he’s never even thought to pretend to be a different person.

It scares him, the wanting, more than wanting sex or illicit hookups or having a secret. He wants the pretty-ugly of a real relationship, something surefooted and precarious all at once, something that feels so attainable it knocks the wind out of him.

Sometimes, it’s that desire that fills him with a thrumming sort of urgency, makes him want to break things off, preserve what’s left of him in a glass box that nobody can get at. But then Reggie will kiss his cheekbone after some filthy hookup in a coat closet at a party at Thistle House, and his lack of fear is nearly the same thing as the fear itself.

Reggie’s parents go away to Montauk for the weekend, leaving their mansion empty, and Reggie invites him over as he twists the strings of his hoodie around his finger. Kevin agrees, and tries not to let his nerves outpace his excitement in the frantic race of his chest.

They stop at a party Veronica is hosting, first, because he would be a _terrible friend, honestly, Kevin,_ if he didn’t stop by first, and the difference between this one and the one at Reggie’s all those months ago is laughable.

He plays Kings with Betty and Veronica and Archie and even _Jughead_ on the Lodge’s opulent leopard rug, and feels something snide and satisfying when he _accidentally_ knocks his rum and coke onto it.

On the other side of the room, Reggie cradles a bottle of overpriced IPA in his hand and crushes at flip cup, teaming up with one of the new kids from Southside, Sweet Pea or something equally ridiculous.

But they make eye contact once every couple minutes, and the sly curl of Reggie’s smirl, a promise of _later,_ perfectly in tune with one another, some line of communication that doesn’t need words to function.

By the time it’s half past twelve, everyone is bordering the line between tipsy and all out drink, and Kevin finds Reggie’s gaze from halfway across the room. He ducks his head towards the door, and Reggie replies with a nod, swigging down the last of his beer, and clapping Sweet Pea on the back.

“I’m heading out,” he informs Betty and Veronica, who are giggling on the rug and braiding one another’s hair, while Jughead and Archie play some sort of video game on the couch and occasionally glancing soppily at their respective girlfriends.

Veronica spies Reggie waiting at the door and wolf whistles surprisingly well. “Get it, Kev!” she cheers, too loud, and Betty snorts, collapsing into the other girl’s lap in peals of laughter.

Kevin rolls his eyes fondly. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t,” he says, pointing a finger at them, and cannot help but grin when Veronica blows him a kiss, Betty already distracted with redoing the fishtail braid in Veronica’s dark hair.

Reggie is in the hallway when he leaves, and Kevin, a little buzzed and even more happy, laces his fingers through his own, pressing a kiss to his Letterman jacket covered shoulder.

“Hi,” he says, smiling something ridiculous, and Reggie rolls his eyes but holds Kevin’s hand in his own anyways, bumping their shoulders together.

He lives close to the Pembroke, so he and Reggie walk the half hour back to his house instead, the moon full and almost unnaturally bright above them. They talk about nothing in particular along the way, but Kevin is still happy in a way he doesn’t fully understand, content like he could spend the next thirty years doing nothing but this.

The walk sobers him up, and his mind is clear when he pulls Reggie in for a kiss on his front doorstep, sliding his cold fingers into pockets and tugging him in close.

“Hi,” he repeats for the second time that night, and Reggie holds his hand in his pocket, brushes his fingers over his knuckles and kisses him in a way that makes Kevin weak in the knees.

“Hi,” Reggie says, and Kevin leads him in the front door, humming _Thunder Road_ under his breath.

* * *

Kevin’s sleep is fucked out and lazy, a dreamless sort of content that he hasn’t had in too long. Reggie steals all the blankets in the middle of the night, but Kevin doesn’t mind, not when his fever hot arm is tossed around his waist, not when his mouth is pressed into the freckled skin of Kevin’s shoulder. Reggie touches him and he burns, all the endless cold coaxed out of him.

Reggie gets up far too early to go for one of his ridiculous runs, just as the dawn is starting to singe the horizon red, and Kevin dozes in his bed, twisting further into sheets that smell like laundry detergent and hair gel and vodka. It’s raining outside, and the smell of coffee drifts up from downstairs, and Kevin is happy in a strange, fragile way.

The alarm clock has just flashed eight in the morning when Reggie jogs back up the stairs, soaking wet from his run. The door bangs open, chipping another fleck of paint off the wall, and Reggie unceremoniously pulls off one still laced running sneaker, and then the other, swearing loudly when he hits his knee on the dresser. Kevin turns and presses his smile into the mussed up sheets where no one will ever see it.

He pulls his rain jacket off next, leaving an arc of water droplets across the expensive wood floors, and the rest of his clothes follow, a pile of damp workout gear on the floor just like Kevin hates.

“You look good,” Kevin offers, and Reggie flashes a grin at him, sharp edged and not nearly as dangerous as it should be.

“So would you, if you managed to get up on time,” Reggie tosses back, lingering in the doorway. He is stark naked and ridiculous, and Kevin shoves the comforters off of his body, stretching out on the bed, because fair is fair, after all.

“I think I’m fine where I am,” he replies crisply, and Reggie’s eyes darken, one hand dragged back through the messy peaks of his wet hair. Tensions snaps between them like a rubber band.

“Come here,” Kevin says, and Reggie springs onto the bed with a savage, predatory grace, mattress springs noisy beneath him as he presses Kevin into expensive sheets. He is soaking wet, and Kevin laughs as he fists his hands through his ink black hair, kissing the taste of rainwater out of Reggie’s mouth.

They have sex sprawled out on top of Reggie’s covers, the cool, rainy February morning blowing in through the open windows, and then again in the shower after, Reggie pressing him up against the chilly tile and leaving a trail of marks from collarbone to hip.

Afterwards, they drink lukewarm coffee in the kitchen, black, because the few sloshes of milk left at the bottom of the carton are expired, anyways. Reggie throws packets of the Sweet n Low that his mother is addicted to at Kevin’s head, and Kevin steps on Reggie’s feet because the flannel pants he borrowed are too big.

There’s no food in the house either, so they walk to Pop’s after, Kevin wearing one Reggie’s shirts because his is hopelessly ruined. It’s still drizzling out, and Reggie can’t remember where his family keeps the umbrellas, so they run through the rain instead, swearing and ducking under trees, Reggie grabbing his hand and tugging at one point, when Kevin isn’t jogging fast enough.

“God, it’s a wonder coach put you on Varsity,” Reggie snarks at one point, and Kevin rolls his eyes with more fondness than he would like.

Inside, Pop’s is the emptiest he’s ever seen it, abandoned by the rainy day, but the inside still glows with that warm, hazy yellow, like a nearly forgotten memory.

They cram into one side of the booth, because Reggie is being an asshole and refuses to move, and they order far too much food. Kevin complains when Reggie steals bites of his chocolate chip pancakes, because he’d never admit to liking them better than the egg white omelet he ordered.

“I’m making you pay,” he insists, and Reggie swipes whipped cream across his cheek in retaliation.

Reggie tsks loudly, mock disapproving. “And on _Valentine’s Day,_ Keller, I must admit I’m rather disappointed. They weren’t lying when they said chivalry was dead.”

“Is it really-” Kevin starts, trailing off when he realizes his pancakes are shaped into _hearts,_ of all things. He glances at Reggie, unsurprised and bedraggled from the rain, his smile the knife Kevin doesn’t mind pressed to his back, and realizes that he’s already put all the pieces together.

“I guess I’m the worst boyfriend ever,” he says.

“You really are,” Reggie confirms, and pulls him in for a kiss.

fin.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!! pls note that comments and kudos mean the world, and feel free to come hang out on tumblr @flwrpotts


End file.
